Has Trump effectively killed the H1B visa programme?

US chairwoman Donald ruff proclaimed john r. Major changes to the H1B visa programme on fri. An HT analysis shows that it amounts to effectively killing the programme. The new visa fees of $100,000 announced by Trump -- something also applicable to an existing H1 B visa holder re-entering the US -- is more than the median annual salary of a fresh H1B visa holder and more than 80% of the average annual salary of all H1B visa holders. As the biggest beneficiary of the programme, India stands to lose the most. Perhaps more than the 50% tariffs Trump has put on Indian exports. This is yet another debilitating blow to Indo-US relations: over 28 years, Indians have received 60% of all H1B visas issued.What changes has Trump made to the H1B visa programme?The Financial Times describes it in the simplest manner.“The six-figure ($100,000) application fee — which (US Secretary of Commerce Howard) Lutnick said employers would have to pay annually — marks a departure for the government, which currently charges $215 to register for an H-1B visa lottery and an additional $780 for employers that sponsor visa applicants. A White House executive order states that the payment is an application fee and does not mention an annual payment”.In addition to the H1Bs, the Trump administration has also announced a gold-card visa scheme where individuals and corporations can pay $1 million and $ 2million to get a US visa. In rupee terms this is almost ₹9crore and 18 crore for a visa.What could the new programme mean for H1B visas? Trump has just announced it. He often changes his mind. But there is good reason to believe that the new H1B visa regime is tantamount to killing the programme. This is because the visa fees might have become equal to almost a full-year wage of the average H1B employee. For somebody seeking their first employment under the H1B visa, the visa fee is now more than the annual wage. According to a 2025 report by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USICS) the median wage for initial employment under the H1B visa programme was $97000.This number was slightly higher for continuing H1B visas ($132000) giving an average amount of $1,20,000. If the visa fees become higher than the annual salary of the employee for whom the visa is being sought, it is extremely unlikely that the applications will even be made.SeeIndia got more H1B visas than other nine in top ten countries combinedOf the 399,395 H1B visas approved in 2024 (this is the number of petitions approved by US Citizenship and Immigration Services or USCIS; and includes the people living in the US who change their status), Indians received an overwhelming 71%. China was a distant second with just 11.7%. India has dominated the number of H1B visas issued as well. The Bureau of Consular Affairs of the US Department of State gives data on visa issuances by nationality from 1997 to 2024. This shows that of the total 4.1 million H1B visas issued in 28 years, 2.5 million or 60% have been issued to Indians. China is a distant second with a 9% share, and third placed United Kingdom has just a 2.6% share. India’s share is almost thrice of the other nine countries in the top ten for the 1997-2024 period. This share would even be higher if India’s share was not relatively lower earlier (although it was the top ranked country every year). It is only in 2007 that India’s share breached the 50% mark and it would take another six years before that share breached the 60% mark. India’s share peaked in 2022, when it reached 81%, after which it decreased to 69% by 2024.India is the only country for which H1B has had this high importance for temporary travel to the USOf all the non-immigrant visas issued by the US – issued to people who do not intend to live permanently there and could be travelling even for treatment or tourism – India is the only country which uses a high share of H1B visas. The top five countries by the number of non-immigrant visas issued in the 1997-2024 period are Mexico, China, India, Brazil, and Colombia. Less than 2% of visas issued to the other four countries were H1B visas. For India, this number is 13.9%. In fact, no other countries’ share (including those not ranked high) goes beyond 6%. Clearly, the new regime will hurt India the most.The new programme will squeeze outsourcing firms far more than high-tech employersThis can be seen from data on India’s outsourcing and business-process giants. In FY2024 alone, Infosys (8,137 visas) and TCS (5,272) had more approved H-1B beneficiaries than the Philippines—the third-largest country of origin after India and China. Yet for many of their employees, the proposed $100,000 fee would match, or even exceed, their entire annual pay. HT’s analysis of certified labour condition applications (LCAs) filed in the third quarter of 2024-25 shows how stark the gap is. Employers must file LCAs with the US Department of Labor whenever they hire, renew, amend or transfer H-1B workers, disclosing details such as job title, work location and wage range. Based on this data, HT calculated the typical pay offered by major Indian firms by calculating the median of annual salary ranges reported in each application, and found that the median salary offered by India’s biggest IT outsourcers ranges from just over $89,000 at Wipro to just under $113,000 at LTIMindtree. By contrast, AI start-ups such as OpenAI and Anthropic are offering average pay packets north of $300,000. To be sure, these numbers also make it evident that a $100,000 fee for an H1B visa is not exactly a drop in the bucket for even high tech employers.